“Constructivist
psychotherapy” is a comprehensive term encompassing a range of
constructivist ideas in the realm of therapy, including personal
construct psychotherapy (Kelly, 1955); narrative psychotherapy (White &
Epston, 1990), dialogical therapy (Hermans & Dimaggio, 2004) and
coherence therapy (Ecker & Hulley, 2008). It is founded on various
constructivist and constructionist threads (developmental, personal,
radical, social, etc.) and also relies on humanistic, feminist and
systemic perspectives. Additionally, constructivist approach to
psychotherapy is very closely related to the postmodern thought.

Constructivist philosophy
implies stepping away from the idea of an objective reality based on a
world which can be known. Instead, this approach offers a perspective
where imaginative processes, together with human senses, shape different
world views, based on various cognitive capacities of humans. If these
views, i.e. mental models of the world, are successful, we interpret
them as outside reality. Unlike the objectivist approach where the human
mind is compared to an audience member, who has arrived late to a play,
and can only notice and register what is happening on a pre-arranged
stage, constructivist therapy deals with a constructivist mind. This
means that what enables humans to navigate their way around life is not
a precise, accurate description of the “territory” as it is, but rather
a collection of mental models or “maps” which have been organized based
on fictions created by humans, which serve the purpose of directing and
guiding their actions.

Knowledge, as an
outcome of the process of construing is not a “postcard from reality”,
but rather a result of human constitutive inquiring efforts, utilized to
create and interpret the world, as well as to attempt to revise and
reshape these interpretations if they should prove to be unsuccessful
and unreliable. Assistance and facilitation of psychological processes
necessary to successfully perform these activities is the aim of
constructivist psychotherapy. We may, therefore, say that constructivist
psychotherapy attempts to assist individuals in changing their view of
themselves, the world and themselves in the world (for more details see Personal Construct Psychology:
Introduction to theory and therapy, D.Stojnov, Novi Sad: Psiholoplis,
2010).